


flesh and bone

by theskyeskye



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Gen, Madmoon if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 11:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11184516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskyeskye/pseuds/theskyeskye
Summary: Sweeney calls out Laura's toxic views of Shadow.





	flesh and bone

**Author's Note:**

> This is my half of an art trade/request fill and I had a lot of fun writing it. Hope you enjoy!

 

Rest stops have an eerie quality at night. Bathed in orange light, quiet, but for the sounds of crickets chirping and cars on the highway, like rolling waves of the ocean, as they passed by. Liminal spaces. Places that were transient; places that ought to be occupied, but weren’t, left you feeling cold and lost. Sweeney had seen these places change over the centuries, but never paid them any mind. He was as transient as the spaces were. 

“Here,” Laura threw down a pile of snacks and shards of plastic from the vending machine. No one had been around to hear her smash through it. Sweeney had taken up residence at a picnic table, cast in shadow, out of the immediate eyeline of the building. He’d merely wanted out of that fucking metal death trap they’d been driving. He’d insisted on the stop, to stretch his legs, to take a leak, to roll some cigarettes. 

The cover of nighttime was ideal. The open air, even more so. Laura stank of death, and looked it, too. 

 “What’s this?” Sweeney asked, eyeing the pile of sugary snacks and small bags of chips. 

“Food, dumbass. You look like hell,” Laura said, and Sweeney gave her a withering look. 

“ _I_ look like hell,” he echoed, deadpan and unimpressed. She met his statement with an equally unimpressed glare. He didn’t question further, he simply snatched up a cupcake and tore it open. One could almost consider it an offering. Wouldn’t that be something? Her, offering anything to him at all. 

He bit into the snack cake and sighed through his nose. The times of offerings and good fortune for him were long gone. No one believed, and perhaps, even after Wednesday’s war, no one ever would again. What place in this godforsaken country was there for the fair folk? About as much place as there was for a zombie with a love mission. 

“How much farther until we get to this miracle worker of yours?” Laura asked while Sweeney chewed thoughtfully. She set to lighting the last cigarette in her pack while watching the skyline. She looked often, and in the distance, she could see a pillar of hope. A beacon that could lead her to Shadow, no matter where she was. Would she still see it when life returned to her limbs and breath to her lungs. There was a listlessness to her gaze into the deep dark. Sweeney watched her. He watched the way her gaze stopped truly seeing and she sank into herself. 

“Couple hundred more miles. We’ll be there by morning, I imagine, and then you can give me back my coin, and go toddling off after your husband dear,” he grunted. Sweeney found her desire to be with Shadow repulsive. It was as good as rotten fruit on a hot summer day. She was selfish. She’d been selfish in life, when she took him as her husband, and now, even more selfish in death. A man ought to be able to grieve the death of a love. 

Sweeney shifted his weight on the bench and lit a cigarette of his own. 

“Yeah,” Laura said, after a long period of quiet during which she kept staring into the horizon. She flicked ash onto the table and lifted the cigarette to her lips again. “Not long now, and I’ll be coming home.” 

“Home? You can’t go home. Your people think you’re dead,” Sweeney snorted. She cast her cloudy eyes on him, a deep frown creasing her features. Her skin was getting more sallow by the day, wrinkling oddly around her expressions and discoloring in places. She was a truly sad sight. Perhaps it would have been more merciful to leave her lifeless, without the weight of this limbo between worlds. 

“Shadow is my home,” She said, as if reading words from a page. There was no strength behind them, no depth of love, no warmth of affection, or power of belief. Sweeney scoffed and shook his head, hunching over the table to look at her properly in the dim light. As she dragged on her cigarette, he narrowed his eyes. His skepticism was palpable. 

“If Shadow ever was your home, you fucked him away the minute you put his buddy’s cock in your mouth,” he pointed out, “You don’t love him. You love what he represents for you. The possibility of not having to rot alone, left with all your self loathing and boredom.” 

Laura didn’t have a witty response. She flicked the butt of her cigarette away into the grass and watched the cherry slowly die. A breeze carried her hair into her face, obscuring the expression she wore. It was one full of deep regret. 

“I fucked up, but we can get past it. He’s my puppy, and he loves me. He _loves_ me. And I love him,” She didn’t look at Sweeney as she spoke, drawing her legs up onto the bench to hug her knees against her chest. Her heart had leapt to life in her chest when they kissed. That had to mean something. He was a beacon of sunlight on the horizon. _That had to mean something_. 

“You’re a real piece ‘o work, Dead Wife,” Sweeney leaned back from the table to look at her. Small and getting smaller by the day, rotting and pathetic, but determined. And yet, nothing in life that she’d experienced seemed to translate through to her unlife. She’d not learned a damn thing. 

“I’m a piece of work? You kidnapped Salim. You drink and fight and steal cars. You do errands for a man you say Shadow shouldn’t trust, but somehow he’s good enough for you. Oh yeah, and you’re a leprechaun who apparently knows Jesus,” Laura snapped back. Sweeney let her have her moment. She would only get the one. 

“Shadow isn’t even a person to you, which is the difference between you and I. I, at least see people as something more than bloody pets and objects. You’re a narcissist of the ugliest kind, Laura Moon, and you don’t deserve the likes of Shadow. Not now, not ever,” Sweeney finished off his cigarette and put it out in his half eaten cupcake. 

Laura looked up and fixed him with a disgusted and moderately confused grimace. 

“Excuse me?” She was incredulous and furious. Sweeney’s lips turned upward, smug in their smiling amusement.

“Puppy. You call him puppy. You dehumanize your husband you love so much. It’s proper fucked up. You’d rather see him kip at the end of your bed like a dog, and follow you around the house on all fours so you can pet him whenever you please than treat him like a human being. You expect him to forgive everything you’ve done because that’s how lowly you think of him. You think he’s just some kicked fuckin’ puppy that you can get to come heel with one good whistle,“ Sweeney pointed at her, shaking his head while she stared back at him, wide eyed and silent, her lips pursed together in fury, “You hurt him, but it doesn’t matter to you. You’ll just keep goin’ back for more no matter how much pain you’re causing him by simply existing in the way that you do. You trained him best you could and now you’re banking on that training. You can kick a dog and it’ll still obey you, because that’s all you ever let it do. Fuck yourself. You’re a selfish cunt, Dead Wife.” 

“I… Shadow is my husband,” Laura hissed, as if that meant anything, as if it explained her actions. She said it as if somehow that statement disproved all if Sweeney’s words. It wasn’t enough to convince anyone. She failed to even convince herself. Sweeney wasn’t satisfied by anything she had to say in her own defense. He didn’t believe that excuse was worth a damn, especially when she showed no remorse for any of it. Sweeney couldn’t understand people who simply couldn’t feel remorse. He carried centuries of it, but she was free as a bird. 

“Shadow _was your husband,_ ” Sweeney corrected, and this one simple refute made Laura tremble. 

She reached for her empty pack of cigarettes with shaking hands, fumbling at it to try and get it open. She swore under her breath as she stared into the emptiness of it. The box dropped back to the table top and her legs slid from the bench, feet thudding to the ground. The cigarette box was as empty as her heart. 

“Here,” Sweeney set a rolled cigarette in front of her and she looked up at him with wary eyes. After all he’d said, his kindness was suspect. He held up his hands in a gesture of peaceful surrender in their disagreement. He’d said what he needed to. 

"What’s this?” Laura took the cigarette from him and he rolled his eyes. She was questioning his motives, which, given the tone of their conversation, was perfectly fair. 

“A cigarette, ya cunt, you look like hell.” 

Laura eyed Sweeney for a long time, and then, took his lighter. 

“You can drive next,” She said, taking a long drag. Sweeney didn’t have a problem with that. In fact, he almost smiled. 

“Fine by me. I think you’ve crashed enough cars for one lifetime.” 

Quiet settled over them while Laura smoked her cigarette and Sweeney ate his weight in stolen snacks. When the silence was broken, it was Laura who spoke up. 

“Why do you even care?” She sounded as if she was accusing Sweeney of something. It took him a moment to process what she meant, and then Shadow’s face sprang to mind. A deep frown settled into his features. Shadow had a kind heart, a good heart. He deserved better than the likes of Wednesday, and he sure as hell deserved better than Laura. Sweeney felt a tug in his gut when it came to truly good people. They were agony to watch. Noble, and all too easily taken advantage of. Usually by people not so different than Sweeney and Laura. 

“Why don’t you?” Sweeney countered, “Shadow is a good man. Would that I could have met him years ago, I might’ve married him before you got the chance.” 

He spoke with a small modicum of humor, but it was laced with some truth. Sweeney felt a longing for Shadow. Laura thought back to their tussle in the hotel room. _Damn his dark eyes…_

“Yeah? I don’t think you’re his type,” Laura laughed wearily, and shook her head. She tipped it to one side, hair spilling across her cheeks and lips as she looked at him. She was filled with agonizing numbness. Sweeney could see it in her dead eyes and hear it in her chilling laugh. He swallowed a knot in his throat. 

She made him feel a kind of anger and guilt he hadn’t the words to describe. Maybe they deserved one another’s company. 

“Maybe not,” Sweeney spoke softly, and got up from the bench. “Come on. Time’s a’wastin’.” 

Laura hopped up from the bench and fell in step beside him, heading back to the van. 

“Yeah… Yeah it is.” 


End file.
